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Here are Sandy Pope’s credentials: She’s been a warehouse worker, truck driver and organizer, and climbed New York City Local 805’s ranks until becoming president in 2005 of the 1,100-plus worker organization.

But does that give her shot at becoming president of the giant Teamsters’ union?

Alexandra “Sandy” Pope thinks so, and this week she said he plans to face off with James P. Hoffa next year for the union presidency. “I’m the real Teamster,” she says. “Hoffa came out of a white collar job.”

She clearly has challenges to overcome. There’s never been a female president for the 1.3 million-member union whose membership, according to Pope, is about 30 percent female today.

Still, in her more than 30 years as a Teamster, Pope has been places where few female union members have set foot.

Indeed, women have rarely made it to the union’s top ranks and so Pope made union history when she was number two on an opposition slate in 2006.

Plus she comes from the small band of reform-minded Teamsters, who have been fighting the union’s leadership on and off for more than three decades.

“The members are fed up with Hoffa. He has been riding on his father’s name and the ride is over,” says Ken Paff, head of the dissident Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He sees several reasons why this time may be different for union reformers who have failed in their last election battles with Hoffa.

One is a split in the ranks that could dilute Hoffa’s strength. Fred Gegare, a former Hoffa supporter from Wisconsin, has already put his name up for the union’s presidency.

Another is the union’s trouble in keeping up its numbers and fending off companies’ tough contract bargaining.

By Paff’s reckoning, the union’s membership has dropped by over 100,000 members since Hoffa took over the union in 1999. The loss would have been higher, Paff says, if the Teamsters had not merged with smaller unions.

And then there is the TDU’s unending mantra that union leaders under Hoffa have fattened their wallets while the union and its members have been suffering.

In 2009, according to the TDU, there were 120 Teamster officials who earned more than $150,000 in salary, the largest number ever in the group’s tallying over the years.

As president of local 805 in New York City, Pope says she earns about $100,000 in salary and benefits.

She doesn’t describe herself as an outsider at war with the union. Rather she talks of “getting along fine” with the union’s leaders in the last few years. She expects to run up against the same money problems as the last campaign when “we got outspent 10 to one.”

“But we’ve got the Internet and a lot of other ways to run a grassroots campaign,” she explains.

Measuring the way Teamsters outside of her circle have treated her in the last few years, she says she hasn’t encountered much negative reaction.

“I think most of the men are ready to vote for a woman. Some may not think a woman can’t handle it. But I think most of the members are ready for a real change.”

“I’m a problem solver,” she says. “It is the worst moment that the labor movement has ever faced and we have to get all hands on deck. You have to get every one involved to save this union and the labor movement.”

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Stephen Franklin is a former labor and workplace reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was until recently the ethnic media project director with Public Narrative in Chicago. He is the author of Three Strikes: Labor's Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans (2002), and has reported throughout the United States and the Middle East. He can be reached via e-mail at freedomwrites@hotmail.com.

Dear Eve Arden,
The advertisement for www.projectionsinc.com was automatically generated by Google. Google's ad system generates ads connected to the text on any given web page. In These Times does not, and never has, signed ad contracts with a "labor relations" company like Projections. Each month, the magazine receives a check from Google based on how many times are readers clicked on a Google-generated ad. Given our readership, I doubt but a handful of people click on anti-union ads. That translates into a few pennies for us.
As for your dissatisfaction with this Working In These Times post: It is a profile, not a news story. Please feel free to detail "all the facts" and the "ugly truths" you refer to for our readers!
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All best,
Jeremy Gantz
In These Times Web EditorPosted by Jeremy Gantz on 2010-10-15 08:40:16

As a hardcore liberal [I'm not afraid to be a liberal either, I don't hide behind terms like progressivism, etc.] I get outraged when I turn on my television and open the newspaper and see just one side of the story. I can't even watch FOX news without reaching for my blood pressure medication. Labor is slighted at every turn and it makes me sick.
But that doesn't mean that progressive publications should offer the same. When the all the facts are heard, I'm confident that I'm right. We shouldn't hide from ugly truths. It's the very reason I cancelled my subscription to the Nation. It's a "my way or the highway" sort of publication.
So please, In These Times, don't fall into this echo chamber trap. This piece is just a press release, it's not an article. It offers nothing but a particular point of view. That's bad reporting. That's bad editing. That's even bad politics.
NOTE:
What's even more disturbing is right below this comment box there is an ad for www.projectionsinc.com, an anti-union firm that promises to keep companies "Union free" [just click here]. Does it really make sense that "labor" publications with the stated purpose of "fighting for corporate accountability and progressive government. In other words a better world" should be funded by anti-union firms?
What is going on with In These Times?Posted by Eve Arden on 2010-10-14 09:30:48

As someone who once supported TDU, I would ask my fellow Teamsters to look before they leap.
TDU candidates have destroyed the locals they have taken over and I shudder to think what Pope would do as the leader of the International.
Just look at Pope's record (something that Mr. Franklin failed to do in his article) as the leader of Local 805. The following numbers are from the Department of Labor and submitted by Ms. Pope herself.
In 2005, Local 805 had assets of $1,753,652 and 1276 members.
In 2007, Local 805 had assets of $1,286,171 and 1201 members.
In 2009, assets had dropped to $762,594 and membership had fallen to 1066 members.
Do you see a problem here?
She also runs the Local 805 pension fund which is critically underfunded, in the red zone, and under a rehabilitation plan that requires 12.5% increased contributions from employers. Very few pension funds are in that bad a shape.
Also if she gets along fine with other mainstream leaders in the Teamsters, why doesn't she have any of them on the record supporting her or running on her (nonexistent) slate? The reason is because no non-TDU leader supports her.
I would expect a fine reporter like Mr. Franklin to explore these questions and her record before putting out a puff piece like this.Posted by Leroy on 2010-10-14 09:12:21

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